What the rhetorical situation profoundly shows us about the degree of anti-communism in the 60s.

Disclaimer: The slogan at the bottom of the Timken Guide mentions “right to work”. Either this guide was not for employees, the way I thought it was, or I am very mistaken about the union situation in industrial plants in the Midwest during the 1960s. I would have assumed that that type of mantra wasn't part of the conversation among workers until much later. So, much of my analysis may well be slightly inaccurate. I had pictured the timken guide to have have been posted throughout the steel plants. In the break room. Next to the cigarette vending machine. Next to a circle saw. It would be dusty and faded.

Who here has read an employee handbook? Or an employee training video. In my experience, their seemingly unpolitical. “Smile when talking to club members.” “Tuck in your shirt at all times.” Much of the cookie-cutter employee-training literature, though, is part of political circumstances. 

So sure, handbooks are gnna change with new laws and new zeitgeist. This blog post, though, will show how much they can show about zeitgeist.

On the one hand, most of the Employee training manuals that aren’t too obscure to find come out of big corporations. Big corporations, more so then any politician, tries to be moderate, though this is specific of industry. Corporations do not want consumers mad at them. So their official statements are bound to be pretty tame and noncontroversial. This is a huge generalization, of course. The point is that Target is one of the most staunchly anti-union shops in the country. Their anti-union employee videos, though shameful, don’t fail to mention some tame viewpoints (Like that it has historically, maybe, bettered working conditions). This is a far cry from some of the stuff we hear about unions from elected representative.

On the other hand, this isn’t advertising. It isn’t even directly targeted advertising. literature for employees isn’t for consumers. When corporate statements reach a nonneglible amount of consumers, someone is spending big chunks of money. In other words, It takes corporate resources to reach it’s consumers. So corporate obsession with towing the line is less true of their internal publication. These laxer standards are especially true for the older literature in question. There was no internet So it’s not a perfect comparison of indicators of contemporary and 60s zeitgeist.

 If I am right about the audience of the temkin printout and the union situation in industrial plants in the Midwest during the 1960s (See disclaimer). If my initial understating was correct, then this templin printout is tame. This wasn’t an advertisement in the National Review, a very conservative newspaper. This is a workplace advertisement. The most anti-union corporation is tame in 1960-something, is tame in 2013. That all communists aren’t loyal to the US, that their among murderers, that they must be immediately reported, these are not what I would expect to be among tame publication. So this templin printout shows, based on the situation it would have been found, how radical the red scare was for america.